Weekly! Ranma podcast series

 You may not have noticed, but there is a new weekly segment for The Otaku Network Podcast called, Weekly! Ranma.  The first episode is already available on YouTube and Spotify at this point and each episode comes out Friday mornings.

 

    Given my anime fandom started in the early 90's, Ranma is a a vital part of that fandom.  I became aware of the franchise a little before the concept of anime took over my brain though.  It came in the form of an article in some forgotten gaming magazine in 1993.  The article, promoting the newly release Ranma 1/2 Hard Battle release for the SNES, provided and overview of the story its self and then went on to talk about the game.  I don't remember anything about the article other than it highlighting the entire concept of the series...the Jusenkyo curses and Ranma transforming between boy-type and girl-type.  I also remember it talking about one character doing the same but into a panda instead of a girl...Ranma's father.  That novel concept stuck with me and I remember mentioning it to friends at school but it kind of filed its self away.

    Skip ahead to either 1995 or 1996 and the obsession with anime is in full force.  As we scoured the shelves of Blockbuster I noticed tapes for the Ranma TV series immediately recalled the article from earlier in the decade and started the journey with episode 1 of season 3...and the introduction of Ukyo to the story.  Look, don't judge, back in the day we weren't bothered by continuity and just watched whatever was available and figured it out from there!  From that point the series became a core title in frequent anime consumption and as a key piece of bringing new people into the cult.  So...to say I was excited about Ranma getting its own remake treatment like Urusei Yatsurai...I would be understating my joy.

    I wanted to discuss it with David, who had only ever seen the first episode of the original series, as part of a whirlwind I put him through trying to find anime that trigger an interest in him at the beginning of his journey.  After episode two, his reaction was exactly what I was looking for!  Ranma still has it.  I really had no idea what to do with the episodes from the direction aspect.  Of course the dialogue will follow the standard of doing an overview of the plot of the episode followed by a discussion about it.  Thats the easy part, but I sat there as the deadline was staring me down, trying to come up with a way to make it different from the other podcast episodes, which are mostly quite static and uninteresting.  I spent about six hours a day and a half before its publishing date and just started throwing idea's against the wall to see what would stick.  Its a bit messy, but I like the groundwork laid with the first episode, with showcasing the way similar scenes look between both versions.  It became pretty time intensive at first to pull them and try to fit them in with the narration of the episode and then find something to fill in the discussion portion.  With episode two, which was recorded and edited down the night before putting this blog post together, I believe I am satisfied just using the comparison panels showing the progression of the episode to occupy the bulk of the background.  Regardless of where we are in the discussion.

    This may change as the episodes progress in this series, but I am OK with a change in consistency.  Also, the song was slapped together in about an hour in my studio...though maybe I shouldn't admit that!    The original opening theme from the first series is so icon to me I really wanted to play around with it for the podcast.  It took a while to isolate the samples in a way that was fun to program with everything else, but I'm not that embarrassed by the work!  Oh, also if you didn't know...again maybe I shouldn't admit this.  All of the background music for the podcast episodes are done by me...

Closing, I hope that my love of Ranma can come across in the podcast episodes dedicated to it.  I'm also really open to suggestions from you about ideas that can be implemented to enhance the experience.  Thanks for reading and listening and enjoy!!